Top ten XML articles and tutorials - January 2008

The ten most popular articles and tutorials for this month were:

1. Simplify Ajax development with jQuery: Discover how easy Ajax and DOM scripting can be

   jQuery is a JavaScript library that helps simplify your JavaScript™ and Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) programming. Unlike similar JavaScript libraries, jQuery has a unique philosophy that allows you to express common complex code succinctly. Learn about the jQuery philosophy, discover its features and functions, perform some common Ajax tasks, and find out how to extend jQuery with plug-ins.

2. The Java XPath API: Querying XML from Java programs

   XPath expressions are much easier to write than detailed Document Object Model (DOM) navigation code. When you need to extract information from an XML document, the quickest and simplest way is to embed an XPath expression inside your Java™ program. Java 5 introduces the javax.xml.xpath package, an XML object-model independent library for querying documents with XPath.

3. A simple SOAP client: A general-purpose Java SOAP client

   This article describes a simple, general purpose SOAP client in Java that uses no specialized SOAP libraries. Instead of creating the SOAP request XML document for you under the hood, this client lets you create your own request with any XML editor (or text editor). Instead of merely giving you the remote method's return values, the client shows you the actual SOAP response XML document. The short Java program shows exactly what SOAP is all about: opening up an HTTP connection, sending the appropriate XML to invoke a remote method, and then reading the XML response returned by the server.

4. Tip: Convert Excel data to XML: Extract data from the popular spreadsheet program

   Believe it or not, not every document is originally written in XML. In this tip, Benoit Marchal explains how to unlock data from Excel files to process them in XML, and examines the pros and cons of different solutions.

5. The 15-minute PHP-with-XML starter: Learn how PHP5 vastly improves your work with XML in PHP

   This first article of a three-part series introduces PHP5's XML implementation and helps those relatively new to using XML with PHP to read, parse, and manipulate, and write a short and uncomplicated XML file using the DOM and SimpleXML in a PHP environment.

6. Create dynamic Firefox user interfaces: Build an RSS reader that downloads data using Ajax and then creates XUL elements dynamically using XSLT

   When you create browser-based applications that display XML data feeds, you often need to code the data-retrieval mechanism and the user interface. Mozilla Firefox provides an infrastructure that frees you from these tasks, so you can concentrate on your application's functionality. Learn how to use Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) to download XML data from a Web server, and discover how you can use Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) to transform it dynamically into Firefox user-interface elements expressed in XML User Interface Language (XUL). You can apply these techniques to any application that uses XML data sources.

7. Mashups: The new breed of Web app: An introduction to mashups

   Mashups are an exciting genre of interactive Web applications that draw upon content retrieved from external data sources to create entirely new and innovative services. They are a hallmark of the second generation of Web applications informally known as Web 2.0. This introductory article explores what it means to be a mashup, the different classes of popular mashups constructed today, and the enabling technologies that mashup developers leverage to create their applications. Additionally, you'll see many of the emerging technical and social challenges that mashup developers face.

8. Rich Ajax slide shows with DHTML and XML: Create dynamic HTML effects using Ajax

   Learn to create an Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax) client-side slide show that's animated using "Ken Burns Effects." Here, you discover how to build XML data sources for Ajax, request XML data from the client, and then dynamically create and animate HTML elements with that XML.

9. Ajax and XML: Ajax for forms: Use Ajax techniques to create input forms

   Augmenting your HTML forms with Asynchronous JavaScript™ + XML (Ajax) callbacks to the server is a practical way to add Web 2.0 functionality to your application. Discover a variety of techniques to add Ajax code and enhance the user experience for PHP applications.

10. PHP and RSS: Getting it together

    RSS Syndication is virtually ubiquitous these days, so it's imperative that a PHP developer at least understand RSS and how it works. This article explains the basics of RSS, some of its many uses, how to use PHP to create an RSS feed from a database, and how to use the XML_RSS module to read an existing RSS feed and translate it into HTML.